Seabees celebration

Battalion members return from Pacific bases

Photos by Richard Quinn / Special to The Star
Eli Fimbres had won a lottery allowing her to have the first kiss among the returning Seabees on Friday at Naval Base Ventura County. She waited six months for this moment with her husband, Jesus Fimbres.

Eli Fimbres waited six months, crossing her fingers that her baby could wait, too.

The 22-year-old mother stood alone on a tarmac at Naval Base Ventura County on Friday, holding a red carnation and a little American flag and looking for her husband to step out of a plane after a half-year overseas with Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5.

Fimbres, dressed in a short black skirt and floral top that couldn't conceal her pregnancy, had won a lottery allowing her to have the first kiss among the returning Seabees.

Her husband, Jesus Fimbres, jogged the last few yards, smiling before kissing her and holding her for a few long minutes.

She was among the crowd of families and friends on hand Friday to welcome home the first returning group from the battalion, which spent six months spread among several bases in the Pacific. The remainder of the battalion returns next week after serving in Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Thailand and Korea.

It was the first time a single Seabee battalion was used for such a vast range of assignments, said Lt. Cmdr. Maria Aguayo, the battalion's executive officer.

With groups as small as a dozen in some cases, the battalion worked on building schools, fixing airfields and improving water facilities across the vast Pacific Theater, Aguayo said.

They will have only a nine-month stay before shipping out again for Iraq and Afghanistan. But for a day at least, all that was forgotten as wives and husbands, sons and daughters, friends and family members embraced their loved ones.

"He was in Iraq the last time, so it wasn't as bad," Fimbres said as she rested her palm on her pregnant belly.

Her husband missed the birth of his first son, Elija, who is almost 2, during an Iraq deployment. His wife didn't want him to miss the birth of their second. "He's due June 20," she said.

"I was cutting it pretty close there," said her husband with a big smile.

His wife has had two close calls already, going to the hospital because she thought she was going into labor early. "But he's waited," she said.

Melissa Phelps, 27, is used to the routine. Phelps, who herself served in the Navy, waited Friday with her two daughters, Taylor, 10, and Emma, 2.

She and her Seabee husband, Jacob Phelps, e-mailed, chatted via computer and made occasional cell phone calls to stay in touch during his six months overseas. The couple's girls were eager to see their dad and celebrate Emma's second birthday, which he missed by two days.

As with every deployment, Melissa Phelps said, there usually is a little adjustment for the family, "for like the first two weeks or so." The biggest adjustment might be that the kids have started sleeping with their mom.

But the couple had been through this before and is likely to go through it again, so they've learned not to expect too much and to be ready for the possible friction of readjusting to life together.

For Kate Martinozvich, 21, it hasn't been so easy. She and her boyfriend, Jesse Butler, 23, did what most couples do and stayed in touch, despite the 17-hour time difference, with off-hour phone calls and e-mails.

"And he wrote me every day," said Martinozvich.

Now, he's going to be training other Seabees at the base, so no deployments are on the horizon for him, she said. "